Note 47 — PROMULGATION OF THE CONSTITUTION.

I have read with pleasure many parts of “Napoleon’s Second Reign,” by Mr. Hobhouse. Though I do not coincide with that gentleman in all his views of the subject, (differing from him in toto as to some,) I admit the justice of a great portion of his observations, and consider the work, on the whole, as a very clever performance. In several matters of description and anecdote he has anticipated me; and I really think has treated them with as much accuracy, and in a much more comprehensive manner, than I should, or perhaps could have done. Mine in fact is but a sketch—his a history. In some matters of fact he appears to have been imperfectly informed: but they are not errors of a sufficiently important nature to involve any charge of general inaccuracy. I myself kept an ample diary of the events of the Hundred Days, (of so much of them at least as I spent in Paris,) and until the re-entry of Louis; and in fact subsequently, though less regularly. From these documents I have extracted what I now publish; but the whole may perhaps hereafter appear in its original shape.

I cannot but express my regret that Mr. Hobhouse did not remain in Paris until after Napoleon’s return from Belgium, when there was a far wider and fairer field presented for the exercise of his pen. I really conceive it will be a loss to literature if he does not recur to that period (materials cannot be wanting): take up his own work where he finished, and continue it until the evacuation of Paris by the allied forces. The events of that interval are richly worth recording; and it would fill up what is, as yet, nearly a blank in the history of Europe.